A Vindication Of The Rights Of Men and A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

Publisher's Summary

Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the first major feminist, is remembered principally as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and there has been a tendency to view her most famous work in isolation. Yet Wollstonecraft's pronouncements about women grew out of her reflections about men, and her views on the female sex constituted an integral part of a wider moral and political critique of her times which she first fully formulated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). Written as a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), this is an important text in its own right as well as a necessary tool for understanding Wollstonecraft's later work. This edition brings the two texts together and also includes Hints, the notes which Wollstonecraft made towards a second, never completed, volume of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Audible Editor Reviews

At the end of the 18th century, The French Revolution sparked lively political debate in England, and one way that British critics and intellectuals engaged in this discourse was by publishing pamphlets that expressed their views. A Vindication of the Rights of Men is Mary Wollstonecraft’s formidable response to Edmund Burke’s writing against the French of Revolution. And A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a retort to contemporaries' arguments that educating women was unnecessary. British actress Jessica Martin performs these pamphlets with conviction and a spot of controlled vitriol, pressing Wollstonecraft’s points home. Wollstonecraft is now viewed as an early feminist and Rights of Woman one of the first - and most enduring - public declarations of the movement’s concerns.

What the Critics Say

"… a thoughtful, wide-ranging and important examination of Wollstonecraft's thought … Wollstonecraft is skilfully considered in terms of radical Enlightenment thought, and the links between this and feminism are probed in a treatment that is alive to the diversity of this radicalism." (Times Higher Education Supplement)

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Most Helpful

“I declare against all power built on prejudices."

These are wide-ranging works in which Wollstonecraft explores basic principles, far-reaching proposals and some concerns that were very immediate to her day. Presenting these works together gives an understanding of the breadth of Wollstonecraft’s philosophy.

She starts from a religious perspective. It is not a traditional, hierarchical perspective, however, but one based on an individual’s personal responsibility for the state of his or her soul. For each person to bear that responsibility, Wollstonecraft posits that God must have given each person the ability necessary to meet the challenge. Therefore, for the sake of his or her soul, each person must have the opportunity to develop such ability. Wollstonecraft focuses on the development of virtue and morals, as opposed to obedience and manners.

From such an egalitarian religious outlook, Wollstonecraft naturally proceeds to an egalitarian ideal of society. She criticizes all arbitrary distinctions that divide society—whether they be of wealth, title, class, sex or race—or that limit people’s opportunities. In her view, nobody was born to serve another. She sees discrimination against women as being similar to both slavery and the English class system that valued the property of the rich more than the lives of the poor.

She insists that each individual is entitled to respect, and that respect and esteem are the bases of the most meaningful relationships. Therefore, the institutionalization of disrespect, however instituted, is anathema to her.

Wollstonecraft acknowledges that men are generally stronger physically than are women, but denies that such advantage gives men any intellectual or moral superiority. She argues that men have used their physical strength to restrain women socially and intellectually, and she inveighs against all the rationalizations and excuses men have created to justify such abuse. As the title quote shows, she objects to all such abuses of power.

She spends much energy attacking those excuses, focusing especially on the harm that restraints cause to women, to their relationships with their husbands and children and to society in general. In these specific arguments, she is focusing mostly on upper class women, those who can afford idleness. She inveighs against the same restrictions and harms that Jane Austen satirized. Through Wollstonecraft’s arguments, however, one gets a much harsher view of the problems women faced than one gets from Austen’s lighter tough.

Wollstonecraft makes many far-reaching suggestions that still resonate today, including education for women; coeducation; paid, public education and a balance of school and home lives. She advocates for women in the professions, including medicine and politics.